Oil marketing companies continued to hold back any change in retail prices of petrol and diesel continuing with their wait and watch stance that has kept the prices of the two auto fuels static for the past nine days.
Accordingly, there was no change in the retail price of auto fuels on Wednesday with the price of petrol remaining at Rs Rs 83.71 a liter and diesel Rs 73.87 a liter in Delhi.
Across the country as well the price of the two petroleum products remained unchanged.
OMCs have gone on a pause mode at a time when news of successful coronavirus vaccine and expectations of a big pick up in demand has kept crude on the boil with prices breaching the $50 a barrel mark. Crude, however, has remained static for late few days reducing any pressure on upward revision in fuel prices.
Petrol prices were very close to breaching the all-time high level of Rs 84 a liter (reached on October 4, 2018) when it touched Rs 83.71 a liter on Monday last week. But the march has been halted ever since.
Global crude prices have risen almost $10 a barrel in the last month reaching over $50 a barrel. But even at this level, it is far less than the average crude price of $80.08 a barrel that was in October 2018, when petrol prices reached highs of Rs84 a liter in the capital.
With Wednesday’s pause, fuel prices have now increased on 15 of the past 27 days with petrol prices rising by Rs 2.65 per liter and diesel by 3.41 a liter.
Petrol prices had been static since September 22, and diesel rates hadn’t changed since October 2.
Though retail pricing of petrol and diesel has been deregulated and oil marketing companies were following a daily price revision formula, the same was suspended for almost two months to prevent volatility in international oil markets from impacting fuel prices regularly during the pandemic.
